Category: Marketing & Brand Building

How to Power up Your B2C Marketing Strategies with Surprising B2B Secrets

Posted on by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

As has been claimed for decades, there are differences between B2C marketing strategies and those of business-to-business (B2B).

However, as companies continue to evolve in an increasingly digital landscape, these disparities, while significant, share the underlying goal of establishing meaningful connections with the people who buy their products and services. 

As companies strive to navigate the complexities of their respective markets, the learnings one can gain from examining the nuances of both B2B and B2C marketing become self-evident.

This is why I decided this week to examine not only the unique challenges and opportunities inherent to each industry, but also to reveal the transformative insights one sector can adopt from the other.

 

Understanding the Landscape of B2B vs. B2C Marketing

At the heart of all effective marketing strategies lies the principle of satisfaction and connection. It involves understanding the needs, desires, and behaviours of your customers/consumers/clients (C³ – now you know where our company name comes from!)  and then composing messages that resonate with them. However, the path to achieving this relationship differs significantly between B2B and B2C marketing.

B2B Marketing: The Complex Web of Decision-Making

B2B marketing focuses on addressing the needs, interests, and challenges of the decision-makers who make the purchases on behalf of their organizations. This realm is characterized by:

  • Longer Sales Cycles: B2B transactions often involve substantial investments, necessitating a more extended period of deliberation, approval, and procurement processes.

A study by Gartner highlighted that 77% of B2B buyers stated their latest purchase was very complex or difficult. B2B transactions, such as IBM’s enterprise software solutions or Caterpillar’s heavy machinery, involve substantial investments and can extend for months or even years. This complexity necessitates marketers to engage in continuous nurturing strategies, educational content provision, and stakeholder management to guide the decision-making process.

  • Rational Decision-Making: Decisions are driven by logic, return on investment (ROI), and efficiency gains, requiring marketers to focus on the value proposition and detailed product information.

B2B decisions are driven by logic and ROI. For instance, Salesforce markets its CRM solutions by highlighting efficiency gains, scalability, and improved sales metrics, appealing directly to organizational goals and the bottom line.

  • Relationship Building: Given the smaller target market and higher stakes involved, forging strong, long-term relationships with clients is paramount.

The emphasis on cultivating long-term relationships is exemplified by the account-based marketing (ABM) approach, where companies like Adobe focus on individual client accounts as markets in their own right, customizing their marketing efforts to each account’s specific needs and history with the brand.

B2C Marketing: The Emotional Journey

In contrast, B2C marketing targets directly individual consumers, tailoring strategies to meet their personal preferences and behaviours. This sector is typified by:

  • Shorter Sales Cycles: Purchases are often impulsive or based on immediate needs, leading to quicker decision-making processes.

B2C purchases, ranging from impulse buys like a new pair of Nike sneakers to more considered purchases like a Peloton bike, often involve shorter decision times. Nike excels in creating an emotional appeal through inspirational storytelling, directly influencing

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The CMO’s 5-Step Guide to Boosting High-Quality Traffic and Customer Engagement

Posted on by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

What is the cornerstone of sustainable growth and competitive advantage today?

The answer is that a business can benefit from technology in this digital age to attract high-quality traffic and engage customers effectively.

This guide is for all executives who recognize the critical role that strategic, data-driven customer engagement plays in their company’s success.

 

Understanding the Challenge of Getting High-Quality Traffic

The explosion of systems and platforms means that the digital landscape is crowded and noisy. With millions of websites vying for our customers’ attention, driving high-quality traffic that converts into loyal customers requires more than a scattergun approach to marketing.

It’s about delivering the right message, to the right people, at the right time. Well, at least that means that nothing has changed for marketing, doesn’t it?!

According to HubSpot, 61% of marketers consider generating traffic and leads to be their biggest challenge.

So why has this become even more challenging? Because consumer behaviour has evolved.

Today’s consumers are inundated with choices and information, making them more selective about where they direct their attention and loyalty.

They seek personalized experiences, and value authenticity and engagement over generic sales pitches. This shift demands a strategic overhaul of how companies approach customer engagement and traffic generation.

Join our Ultimate 60-mins CX Makeover to discover a new way to decrease information investments while simultaneously deepening the knowledge of your market and customers.

Leveraging Data for Personalisation 

The key to unlocking high-quality traffic lies in data-driven personalization.

A study by Epsilon found that 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase a brand that provides personalized experiences.

By leveraging data analytics, marketers can gain insights into customer preferences, behaviour, and purchase history, enabling them to tailor their messaging and offerings.

Consider Netflix, which uses viewing data to personalize recommendations for its users. This data-driven strategy not only enhances user engagement but also keeps customers coming back for more.

By analyzing the vast amounts of data available to them, Netflix can predict what its users will enjoy watching next, leading to increased customer satisfaction and retention rates.

The Power of Content Marketing to Attract High-Quality Traffic

In Conclusion

Driving high-quality traffic and engaging customers in today’s digital landscape requires a strategic, data-driven approach. By leveraging personalization, content marketing, SEO, and social media, and by measuring the success of these strategies, CEOs and CMOs can not only meet the challenge head-on but turn it into a significant opportunity for growth and differentiation.

Embracing these strategies requires a commitment to understanding your audience deeply, experimenting with different approaches, and continuously optimizing based on data insights. The rewards, however, are in terms of customer loyalty, brand strength, and business growth.

 

Would you like to make a quantum leap in your business by making small, atomic changes, such as reducing your information investments yet still knowing more about your customers; increasing your innovation success rate or optimising employee motivation and loyalty? Then CONTACT US TODAY. Your organization’s success could be at the end of our

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Top Posts of 2023 on Customer Centricity

Posted on by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

Here at C3Centricity, we publish books (Winning Customer Centricity), articles and training on customer centricity, because we’re passionate about helping companies to successfully adopt a customer-first strategy.

Since we founded C3Centricity in early 2011, one of our traditions has been to share the most popular posts on customer experience at the beginning of each new year. 

This past year has been particularly successful for C3Centricity, with many of our newest posts getting the top scores globally! This is quite tough for a blog that has been running for almost 13 years and highlights the quality of the content we share with you each month.

Of course, there are also a few perennials that have been appearing in our top 10 list for years, like insight development and customer observation. Since no brand is successful without a foundational insight, and customer understanding is its major essential element, these two will always be popular – they also are on Google’s first page, which certainly helps and confirms the quality of their content.

So let’s have a look at the Top 10 list in 2023, and see if your own favourites are there. If not, then please let us know in the comments. Thanks.  

#1. Five Brilliant Ideas to Boost Your Insight Development

Boost your insight developmentThis post regularly appears in the top three posts on C3Centricity. This shows the quality of its recommendations and content. And the importance of business insights. 

Ever wondered why you struggle to develop actionable insights? This post shares some of the main reasons why even large companies sometimes fail at this essential art. Then, it offers some suggested solutions to help you.

Insights are the foundation on which every single successful brand is built. If your brands are lacking strong positive growth, they are probably missing that insight that will make them powerhouses.

So it is vital that you learn how to develop them and then how to action them in your communications and innovation. Again, if you struggle to action your insights, you’re most certainly missing one of the steps covered in this post.

To stimulate your thinking, the article includes many real-world examples of how great insights can be turned into powerful ad campaigns that connect with customers and motivate them to buy.

If you’re ready to finally learn how to develop actionable business insights, check out our online course on the topic HERE.

#2. Five Rules of Customer Observation for Greater Success

Measure your company image

This post has also been among the top articles on C3Centricity for many years. It is a cornerstone post that is regularly updated to remain highly relevant in today’s marketplace.

Its popularity clearly shows the need we all have to understand how to get up close and personal with our customers – the right way.

The five rules it includes are easy to follow and will make every occasion to watch and listen to your customers so much more interesting and valuable.

And if you want to learn how to watch

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7 Secrets to Business Growth from Leading Global Brands

Posted on by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

Whenever several people ask me to share my strategies for achieving business growth, it indicates that something significant is happening in the marketplace.

This is precisely what happened to me a few months ago. No less than two of my current clients and four new companies have asked me for support in growing their businesses in just the past month! In particular, they have all said that one or more of their brands is stable (to be polite) and that they want to reverse their (negative) trend.

Is this your situation, too? Did you also struggle to achieve growth this year? If so, I have a useful 7-step process that will bring you rapid change in 2024. (although if I were one of the self-proclaimed “gurus” we all see on social media these days, I probably would guarantee you results in days or weeks, shouldn’t I?!!)

I believe that one of the major issues in marketing these days is that companies are following an incomplete, outdated CX (customer experience) model.

 

The Need for a New CX Model

The CX Index states that 90% of businesses, regardless of the vertical they are operating in, have made CX their primary focus. And research by Gartner concluded that 80% of organizations expect to compete mainly based on CX.

This should be good news for customers, but there’s a problem.

Most discussions about customer experience only consider the interaction between the customer and the company. As a result, most effort goes into improving customer service departments and call centres.

Since these departments tend to be either smaller or even outsourced, their changes have little impact on how a business works. They are also of little interest to top management.

The customer journey is seen as linear and only impacts different departments at distinct points in time. Even if their emotions are considered at each touchpoint, which is already an improvement, it remains static.

In addition, information about the customer may be gathered, but it is rarely shared, let alone integrated, for deeper knowledge and understanding.

This has resulted in individual actions being taken without a holistic view of the customer or their experience. That is why so few succeed.

 

Quantum Customer CentricityQuantum Customer Centricity (QC2) takes a multi-dimensional view of the four moving parts of a customer-first strategy. It boosts business by leveraging your strengths while identifying the biggest opportunities for growth. It finds the small, key changes that will maximise your company’s benefit.

And these smaller atomic transformations are far more likely to succeed than larger ones.

QC2 is a breakthrough approach that integrates rather than replaces what you are already doing well, so progress is made faster and usually also considerably cheaper.

It creates greater agility, delivering more targeted and accelerated results than most of the traditional models typical to larger organizations.

If you’d like to learn more about QC² and what it can do for your business, you can download a free copy of the book “The … Click to continue reading

Navigate a Challenging Business Environment and Stay Ahead of Your Competition

Posted on by

When facing a challenging business environment, which these days is true for almost every industry, companies don’t always have the time to make considered decisions. Agility has become a much-needed skill.

So, how can companies be better prepared for whatever the future holds? 

Agility needs preparation and with this in mind, most major organisations conduct some sort of societal trend following in the hope that they will correctly “guess” what might happen. You may be one of them. So it might surprise you that I believe this is a huge mistake, especially if you think that trends alone will better prepare your organisation!

Think about it. Most companies follow the same trends, attend the same trend “shows” & conferences, and get the same or at least very similar reports.

This results in them all working on the same ideas and concepts, and eventually launching very similar products and services or campaigns, that struggle to compete effectively.

Have you never wondered why suddenly everyone is talking about a certain topic, using similar slogans, or launching equivalent offers? Now you know why!

Here’s how to avoid this and develop a powerful competitive advantage.

 

Market Evidence

I want to start by sharing just one example of the problem I just mentioned. A few years ago, we started seeing many companies using the idea of “YES” and “NO” in their advertising. In Europe, these included:

  • The Swiss Migros Bank: see the videos here – only in French & German, I’m afraid but still easy to understand whatever language you speak.
  • Coke’s “Say Yes to Love” campaign.
  • Coke say yes to love

 

  • BMW 320i  Campaign YES YOU CAN

 

These are just three examples from very different industries, but I’m sure there are many others in your own country. (If so, please share the example in the comments below.)

Clearly, the trend for more independence and freedom has been emphasised in all three organisations mentioned above. Perhaps they are working with the same trend or advertising agency? Or maybe they are buying the same external trends report. It certainly looks like it, doesn’t it?

Companies that develop concepts based upon this type of external resource alone can find themselves in a race to be the first to market when using the ideas these reports suggest.

Incidentally, it is not always best to be the first when introducing new concepts to consumers, especially when they require learning new ways of thinking or working.

So what can you do about it? The vital step that many – dare I say most – organisations don’t take, is to turn the trends they are following into plausible future scenarios.

Scenario planning ensures original thinking from which proprietary ideas are conceived, and takes the development of new concepts in-house, where it belongs.

Then, the new product and service concepts, the new advertising campaigns, and the new promotions that are designed are unlikely to be the same as those of the competition and will, therefore, have a greater chance of success.

 

Turning Trends

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The Promise of AI and ML to Take Digital Marketing to the Next Level

Posted on by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

Everyone seems to be talking about the impact of AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) these days. As if ChatGPT wasn’t enough to get everyone excited, OpenAI surpassed itself by upgrading to ChatGPT4! And competitors are forced to launch their AI platforms earlier than planned.

If you haven’t tried them yet, I highly recommend you jump on the bandwagon and give these new tools a spin. They are great fun. But they can also be handy for businesses and bloggers. 

Before getting into their uses, I wanted to start with a summary of where AI and ML are today.

 

From Text to Voice

Most of us have grown up with text communication and the written word, but Gen Z, born after 1996, is more comfortable with voice. They are less formal but far more impatient than previous generations.

They expect Alexa, Siri, Cortana and similar voice-activated personal assistants to be available whenever they have questions. With this type of search expansion into daily life, being on the front page of Google is no longer good enough. You have to be the number one answer to their questions!

[easy-tweet tweet=”Being on the front page of Google is no longer good enough; you have to be the number one answer in this voice-activated, personal-assistant-supported world we live in.” hashtags=”voice-activated, SMX, CEX, CRM”]

 

AI is Not One Technology

Despite what digital marketers may have hoped, AI and ML are not the solutions to all our problems. It is a series of technologies addressing various current and future customer needs.

Unlike normal analytical processes, using AI needs developers and users to start with the end in mind. Knowing what we are looking for, rather than waiting to see what the analysis brings us, needs a very different thought process. The questions asked to become as important as the answers received, if not even more so. Therefore it is advisable to make them the best you can ask. Your digital marketing has everything to gain and nothing to lose.

[easy-tweet tweet=”Being on the front page of Google is no longer good enough; you have to be the number one answer in this voice-activated, personal-assistant-supported world we live in.” hashtags=”voice-activated, #CEX, #CRM, #SMX”]

AI and ML are Not 100% Accurate

AI is still in its infancy, despite great leaps forward in some areas in the past year or so. For example, the language translation is still inaccurate today, but that doesn’t mean it’s not helpful. Anything that moves us towards increased customer satisfaction from our digital marketing efforts is significant. However, we must understand their limitations and not be fixated on perfection or rely totally on them.

One of the biggest challenges still prevalent in businesses today is siloed data. It is easy to see that the more information sources we integrate, the more accurate our platforms will likely be. But until we finally break down our internal silos, AI will not be able to deliver its full potential.

 

Taking the Robots Out

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Win Online: 9 Ways to Make a Great Website that Engages More Successfully

Posted on by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

What makes a great website?

What makes a website great for your customers?

What makes a website great for your potential customers?

The answers to these questions will help you to publish a successful website. One that encourages current and potential customers to find, see, like and then engage with your content. All of these are precursors to buying your products and services for many customers! 

I published a post on this topic many years ago, which included the seven elements that must be on your website. It is called “The 7 essentials of Customer Centric Websites.” and it still makes a useful (and short) read.

One of the major changes since then, is that today, with mobile more likely to be the screen of reference, we have gone from a “no scroll” to a “must-scroll” format. Words have given way to more images and now also to videos. We have gone from information to entertainment, from push to pull, and from “ours” to “theirs.”

Many articles about optimising websites talk too much about technology and usually include company rather than customer priorities. But you, fellow customer centricity champions, know that everything should start with the customer! So I’d like to build on my earlier post to lay out what it takes to win online these days.

 

9 Essentials of a Great Website

Checking a website is often the first step a customer makes when they are interested in buying a brand or learning about a manufacturer. Therefore we should ensure that ours responds to their needs, whatever the reason for their visit. I have chosen the nine essential elements of a customer centric website below.

Please let me know what you think, by adding a comment below.

1. It’s for the customer, not (just) you

Although your website is about you and your company and/or brands, it is your customers, both current and potential, that need to like it.

Therefore, start by thinking about for whom you are developing the site and what their desires and needs are. Use our  4W™ template to ensure that you go as deep as possible in your understanding of them. I also suggest you read “12 things you need to know about your target customers” for more on what information you need to gather in order to describe them in depth.

 

 

2. An intuitive structure

We don’t have time to read, let alone learn how to navigate a website. Customers will leave if they can’t immediately find what they are looking for. This explains why many – dare I say most? – businesses have a 50% plus bounce rate. (See 20+ Average Bounce Rate Benchmarks -2022 update)

It may still be necessary to have a sitemap for those visitors who need help in navigating or are less logical. However, it no longer needs the prominence it once did.

Put it at the bottom of the page in the footer and don’t waste valuable real estate by placing … Click to continue reading

7 Ideas from Great Leaders to Make Your Leadership Style More Effective

Posted on by Alan Hale

I’d like to start this post with a story about some great leaders. As you know, I published my book Winning Customer Centricity a few years ago. And being the customer centric champion that I am, I wanted to ensure that people could buy it wherever they were and in whatever format they preferred.

This meant offering hardback, paperback and Kindle versions. It also involved recording an audiobook. Now you’re probably thinking, as I myself did going into it, “How difficult is it to read out loud?”

I went for my first day of recording with not much more preparation than getting my book printed off. What a mistake! Luckily we had technical problems and Tony Johnston, who helped me with the project, decided to redo the first part again a week or so later.

That extra time gave me the chance to do two invaluable things. Firstly, to get some coaching from two incredibly talented – and patient! – actors, Pamela Salem and Michael O’Hagan. Secondly, to better prepare myself by reading the book aloud several times, then marking it up with pauses, emphases and other notes, to make the recording more agreeable to the listener.

However, after successfully recording the first half of the book, I again fell back into my usual way of presentation mode on the second day, and Tony generously offered to re-record it. So I went back to my dream team of coaches and did some intensive voice training and exercises. And lucky for me – and Tony – it was third time lucky. You can judge for yourself by listening to a sample on Amazon.

By now, you’re probably thinking “Nice story Denyse, but what does all of this have to do with me and my business?”

It’s a great question; let me answer it by saying “A lot!” Read on, to find my easily applied learnings that will make your leadership style more efficient and effective, no matter what industry you work in. And in addition, by adopting all seven behaviours, you will be portraying a more customer centric style and become a great leader yourself.

 

1. We should never stop learning

As we rise in the corporate world, we seem to forget that we don’t know it all! We sometimes even think that we should have all the answers, or worse still, believe that we do!

I’m often quoted as saying:

“A day without learning is a day without living”

It’s vital that we continuously strive to keep learning and challenging our everyday habits and behaviours. Lifelong learning should be everyone’s mantra.

This has become increasingly important because technical advances are coming almost daily, so we must constantly rethink how we work. We should adapt and integrate those technologies that could improve our business processes.

 

BONUS: #8 Prepare for the Unthinkable

I would encourage all leaders to revise their vision considering these seven points.

But I’d like to add a bonus idea that will truly impact … Click to continue reading

5 Secrets You Need to Know About Brand Portfolio Success

Posted on by Alan Hale

How do you know when your brand portfolio has too many variants? In my opinion, the answer is that it’s when you can’t answer that question! Can you?

One of the most popular evergreen posts on C3Centricity is “The Beginners Guide to Brand Portfolio Management.” It seems that we all suffer from a deep-rooted fear of managing and reducing our brand portfolio, especially when it includes many historic or regional variants.

That is why I decided to write about these best-kept secrets in portfolio management, which even large corporations are not always aware of!

 

MORE IS RARELY BETTER!

We live in an over-abundant world of consumer choice, but more is rarely better. The paradox of choice is a powerful concept  popularised by Barry Schwartz.

It states that people actually feel freer when they are given fewer choices. Have you never ended up walking out of a store without the purchase you had planned, because you had been faced with too many choices? I know I have – often!

It is said that the limited choice offered in hard discounters is one of the reasons for their success. It appears that it’s not only about lower prices.

Retailers such as Aldi and Lidl present just one or two brands of each category they stock, in addition to their own brand. The branded products they do sell are almost always the cheapest offering the brand has or one of their older versions that are no longer very popular. And they are usually at the same price if not even higher than in normal supermarkets!

More than fifteen years after the first research on which Schwartz based his theory was conducted, new studies have given some alternative perspectives on choice. They claim that large assortments are not always a bad thing. In the study by Gao & Simonson, they propose that many factors were forgotten in Schwartz’s original study.

You can read the full findings of this latest work in Neuromarketing. What I found of particular interest in this article, being the customer champion that I am, is that they conclude by saying that it all depends on understanding your customer – doesn’t everything?! Their summary findings state that:

“In certain situations (when the ‘whether to buy’ decision comes before the ‘which option is best’ decision) a large assortment CAN increase purchase likelihood. Especially in eCommerce, it is possible to reap the benefits of a large product assortment, while helping customers make choices?”

In other words, the online searches that we all now perform before purchasing many articles will benefit from a wide selection of offers. Once we decide to buy, a large choice can become a barrier to the final purchase.

Although Schwartz’s original book was published in 2006, he more recently commented on consumers’ current choices in “The Paradox of Expanded Choices.” He concludes the article wistfully by saying:

“We can imagine a point at which the options would be so copious that even the world’s most

… Click to continue reading

Packaging: Are You Using This Free Channel For Communicating With Your Customers?

Posted on by Alan Hale

Do you consider your packaging to be a part of the product, protecting its contents and framing its on-shelf life? Or do you consider it to be an integral part of your connection with your customers at an important moment of truth, that of purchase and usage? Or both of these?

If you answered both, then I believe that you are making maximum use of your packaging or at least you recognise its potential for communicating.

If you answered only one of the choices, then you may be missing an important opportunity. Let me explain, with a few examples.

 

People don’t read instructions

We all expect most things that we use or consume to be intuitive these days. In other words, we assume that we will understand how to build / cook / use them without reading the manual / instructions.

If you are like most people – myself included – this has nothing to do with the complexity of the product concerned. I myself will only turn to the instructions when something doesn’t work: I end up with left-over screws when mounting a flat-pack piece of furniture, or I can’t achieve multi-recordings on my smart TV or cable box.

In the article How Likely Are You to Read the Instructions they link behaviour to personality types. It makes an interesting read and offers at least some explanations as to why many (most?) of us still don’t read instructions.

Since the internet arrived, we have access to more and more information, and yet we seem to be reading less and less. Therefore as marketers, we need to ensure that any vital information we want to share, is clearly highlighted on the pack.

 

People do look at packs

Whether it is the cream we put on our faces, the cereal we eat for breakfast, or the dip that we offer to friends on match night, there are moments when we are faced with packaging for more than a split second. It is at these times that we are likely to read at least some of what is written on the pack.

It therefore makes sense to provide more than just a list of ingredients. After all you have your customer’s attention, so make use of it to impress or educate.

Here are a few of the best examples I have come across:

Nestle compass on Packaging is Part of Product or PromotionNestlé does a great job of providing useful information on their pack,s with their “nutritional compass.” This includes four different pieces of information: good to know, good to remember, good question and the nutritional data.

What I particularly like about what Nestle has done, is to combine mandatory information on nutritional values, with useful information for the consumer. Although they may not be the most consumer centric company around, at least they did think consumer first in the development of their “compass.”

Juvena message on Packaging is Part of Product or PromotionJuvena of Switzerland: The short message to “Enjoy the smoothness” on the back of the Juvena hand cream sample tube, makes the experience both … Click to continue reading

10 Ways to Improve Customer Centricity Today

Posted on by Alan Hale

Many of you know that it is vital to continuously improve your customer centricity. You must put the customer clearly at the heart of your business in everything you do. But that’s easier said than done because your customers are constantly changing.

I think that’s why many businesses struggle to improve their customer centricity because they don’t know where to start. Am I right? If so, then this article is especially for you. 

This week I want to share ten simple actions to accelerate your organisation’s improvement of customer centricity. 

 

#1 Review the description of your target audience

Complete this 4W persona template for customer centricityLet’s start at the very beginning – with the customer of course!

Do all your brands have a clear description of their target audience? These days we tend to refer to these as personas or avatars. Whatever you call yours, they should be precise, detailed and ideally visual as well.

If you haven’t yet developed your persona, or you know it is not as complete as it could be, why not use our new C3Centricity 4W™ Persona Template? Complete the who, what, where and why for each of your brands and finally understand who you are aiming to attract.

I suggest you also complete one for your company if it appears predominantly on your packaging or communications. I did this for a client and found that some of their brands were positioning themselves in opposition to their company image. As you can imagine, this was getting them nowhere and damaging both their brand and company image!

Include in your own persona template not only demographics and consumption/purchasing habits, but also information about where your customers do these things, what values they have that you can tap into, and what emotions motivate them to use your brand.

If your current persona doesn’t include all this information, it is probably time to update it – and why not with our 4W™ template?

 

#2 Optimise how you connect with your customers

Do you know the best way to contact your target customers and their preferred place and time to connect? You should after completing your updated persona template.

Review how you communicate with your customer and what information exchange there is at that time. Is it a one-way or two-way discussion? Are you in a monologue or a dialogue?

Obviously, the second communication style is what you should be aiming for. You can learn more about your customers when they are ready to share their information. And that comes when they trust you to keep their data safe and know that you only collect what you need to give them a superior experience. Make sure that’s what you are doing.

#3 Identify the needs your brand is addressing

Do you know what needs your customer has and which of them you are tapping into?

Which customer need are you solvingThey certainly have several needs, but you should aim to address only one of them.

If you attempt to address more than one need at the same time, … Click to continue reading

How to Easily Use Customer Co-creation for Profitable Growth

Posted on by Alan Hale

One of my clients, who is following the 50 weekly actions for customer centric excellence as described in my book Winning Customer Centricity, recently asked me for some ideas on how to better manage their customer co-creation.

Working more closely with customers is the best way to understand, satisfy and delight them. So I am impressed that they are taking customer co-creation even further than they are doing today. In fact, I realised that this is an area that many of you may be interested in learning more about, so I decided to share what I told them. But first …

 

What is Customer Co-creation?

The term co-creation has been around for decades. However, it is only in the last ten years or so that we are seeing a growth in co-creation in so many different areas of marketing.

According to Wikipedia co-creation is

“A management initiative, or form of economic strategy, that brings different parties together (for instance, a company and a group of customers), in order to jointly produce a mutually valued outcome.”

Individualisation, which offers higher-priced items with a customer perceived higher-value, has also been popular for years. It allows customers to design their own unique products to show off their personality. For instance, customers can personalise their M&M chocolates and design their own Nike running shoes.

But these are not strictly co-creation, since they are designed by only one person for use by just one person. Co-creation is rather about designing an offer by many, for the purchase and enjoyment of many. 

After the success of such personalised offers, organisations understood that there is immense value in getting input from customers. Many now include them not only in product enhancements, but also in developing their advertising, promotions and even in first-stage innovation.

The practice has been further intensified by the internet, which has enabled companies to reach out to customers across the globe, virtually for free. Social media, in particular, is a great source of customer understanding, as well as for highlighting issues with current offers. This is why co-creation should include social media in some form, as I’ll share further on.

 

Who to work with?

Winning Customer Centricity - The BookAs I mention in my book, not all business managers feel comfortable exposing their new ideas and concepts to their customers. If this is the case in your own organisation, then you are left with the only option of interviewing employees. This isn’t such a bad thing; after all, they too are customers, but you need to keep in mind their biasses. They probably know more about the brand than the average customer does and they are also likely to be more positive towards it. However, their passion for the company and its brands is a valuable asset not to be neglected.

If your management allows you to work with customers, then you will want them to be vetted for different things by the recruitment agency.

By the way, I highly recommend using a recruitment … Click to continue reading

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